


Plenty of Time

by Mairead1916



Category: Shame (2011)
Genre: Family, Fat Shaming, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queer Character, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:20:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27232630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mairead1916/pseuds/Mairead1916
Summary: "It was Sullivan tradition to leave the family at eighteen, move elsewhere, and forge a new life in which the past and the people in it held no consequence, but Sissy had always bucked tradition, had always had a way of pulling her siblings back into her orbit."As a child, the only person Kitty Sullivan could count on for stability was her older brother Brandon. Now a young adult, long since distanced from her family, Kitty is left with patchy memories of her tumultuous past life--a life shaped by an angry mother, absent father, flighty sister, and unknowable brother.An exploration of the relationships between Sissy, Brandon, and their younger sister Kitty (original character), told from Kitty's perspective (3rd person POV).
Kudos: 2





	Plenty of Time

**Author's Note:**

> I originally intended this story to be two parts, with the second part focusing more on the siblings' interactions in the present day. However, I'm not sure I'll have the time or inclination to finish that, so I thought I'd post just the first part as a character study. If you're interested in more from this story, let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

It was Sullivan tradition to leave the family at eighteen, move elsewhere, and forge a new life in which the past and the people in it held no consequence, but Sissy had always bucked tradition, had always had a way of pulling her siblings back into her orbit. The night Kitty finally lost her virginity, at a healthy twenty-two-years-old, her sister called her five times, as if she knew and wanted to catch her in the act.

“Shouldn’t you answer that?” Kitty’s girlfriend, Maribel, asked the third time Sissy’s name flashed across the screen of Kitty’s phone.

“No,” Kitty said, reaching across Maribel to turn the phone off, noticing how her naked breast molded itself to the curve of Maribel’s back, as if it belonged there.

“What if it’s important?” Maribel asked.

“It never is.”

“Okay. I wouldn’t mind, though.”

“I would.”

With this, Kitty lay her head back on Maribel’s pillow and reached an arm toward her girlfriend lying next to her in bed, in what she hoped was a seductive gesture. It was, Kitty determined, good enough, prompting Maribel to roll onto her stomach, wrap a leg around Kitty, and pull herself over, letting her weight rest against Kitty’s body.

“Ready?” Maribel asked.

Kitty nodded, breathless as Maribel wrapped her mouth around Kitty’s left nipple. Kitty’s whole body prickled and as Maribel lifted her head back up to kiss her, Kitty felt a greater sense of urgency than she ever had before, reaching for Maribel and plunging her fingers into Maribel’s black curls. Maribel smiled but did not reciprocate, placing her hands instead on Kitty’s breasts, squeezing painfully and wonderfully. Then Maribel moved her hands to either side of Kitty’s ample frame running them down from her ribs to her hips, reaching between her thighs, pulling them apart.

Kitty had been wanting this for so long—from Maribel specifically and from another woman generally—she felt she should perhaps say something, express her gratitude in some way. But, when she opened her mouth all that came out was, “Don’t hurt me.”

Maribel drew back immediately. “Do you want to stop?” she asked.

“No,” Kitty said, shaking her head vigorously, horrified with herself.

“It’s okay, Kitty. We can stop.”

As Maribel reached for Kitty’s face, tried to hold it between her hands, Kitty ducked out of her grasp, shook her head again.

“Did something happen to you?” Maribel asked.

This time Kitty moved her head forward, colliding with Maribel in a hard, slightly painful kiss. She pulled Maribel’s head to her chest and nodded at her to continue, smiling as Maribel finally became convinced, kissed her way down Kitty’s body, her lips coming to rest in between Kitty’s thighs.

Later, lying in Maribel’s arms, Kitty felt ecstatic and slightly melancholic. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that,” she said.

“It’s pretty intuitive.” Her eyes closed, Maribel began kissing various parts of Kitty’s body—her cheek, her shoulder, her breast. As she did this, Maribel drew Kitty in more closely, and Kitty marveled, not for the first time, at how protected she felt within this much smaller woman’s arms, how they somehow encompassed all of her despite the size difference.

“I think I should ask,” Maribel said, opening her eyes, “is there anything you want to tell me?”

“Just that I’m very happy.”

“I wouldn’t ever hurt you, you know.”

“I know that.”

“And if anyone else ever tried,” Maribel reached for Kitty’s hand, squeezed a little too tightly, “I’d kill them.”

When Kitty turned her phone on the next morning, she saw two new missed calls from Sissy, just one voicemail though. “She’s learning some restraint,” Kitty thought, deleting the voicemail without listening to it.

Kitty had a tendency to wave off compliments, both figuratively and literally. She was unaccustomed to them, only ever excelling in school, where assessments of her academic prowess felt more like statements than praise. Her brother, Brandon, used to tell her she was beautiful but, as an older brother, he had to say that sort of thing, and he only ever said it to her when she was sad or when someone else had asserted the opposite, and he stopped saying it when she turned sixteen, perhaps concerned that a twenty-four-year-old man saying such a thing to a sixteen-year-old girl would be inappropriate, siblings or not.

When Maribel first told Kitty she was beautiful, Kitty’s hand flew out from her side as if by its own accord, brushing the compliment aside before it had time to reach her.

“You are!” Maribel had insisted.

“I’m not,” Kitty said. “I’m fat.”

“Well,” Maribel said, “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Perhaps this was why Maribel took to pressing Kitty’s hands down to the bed during sex, to prevent Kitty from her usual line of defense, to give her praises—often nonverbal—a better chance at getting through. Kitty didn’t mind so much. She minded a bit, would have liked to touch Maribel as Maribel was touching her, but she got used to it after a while, began to appreciate the way it helped her to focus on herself and her own pleasure, to feel what Maribel was doing with greater intensity. Kitty never pinned Maribel in the same way. She worried that, given her size, it might make her seem overly aggressive. And, besides, she still needed some guidance. Maribel was right. It was more intuitive than Kitty had thought, but she was always open to suggestion, to a gentle nudge in the right direction or tempo.

Then, one night, instead of pinning Kitty’s hands down by her sides, transforming her into a corpse-like figure, Maribel shoved Kitty’s hands above her head and held them there, the way a captor might restrain a captive.

“This is okay,” Kitty told herself, trying to focus on the pleasure of Maribel’s touch, of Maribel’s lips and tongue as they travelled the length of Kitty’s body.

But then Maribel was digging her fingernails into Kitty’s wrists and Kitty couldn’t understand why and, before she knew it, she was yelling, “Get off of me,” and Maribel was lying at the edge of the bed, looking ruffled, as if she had just been pushed.

“I’m so sorry,” Kitty said, realizing what had happened.

“ _I’m_ sorry. I didn’t know…”

“Oh my god,” Kitty said, holding her face in her hands, utterly mortified and, she now realized, a bit frightened. 

“I should have asked.”

“Shit.”

“It’s all right,” Maribel said, laying a tentative hand on Kitty’s shoulder. Then, “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“No,” Kitty said, rising from Maribel’s bed—it was always Maribel’s as it was always Maribel who made the invitation—then, feeling exposed in her nakedness, wishing she hadn’t. Dressing as quickly as she could, Kitty could hear Maribel speaking to her but couldn’t make out the words or meaning. Unable to speak herself, she grabbed a crumpled blanket off the floor and left the room, settling herself on Maribel’s couch, where she was found in the morning by a surprised roommate.

“If you have to grow up in a fucked-up family, it’s best to be the youngest.”

This is what Kitty had told Maribel when they’d met two months prior at a queer women’s mixer at which Kitty and Maribel were the youngest attendees by far and gravitated toward one another as a result, sharing personal details more quickly than was perhaps natural.

“Why’s that?” Maribel had asked following Kitty’s pronouncement.

“Because your older siblings look out for you, protect you from the worst of it.”

“What was the worst of it?”

At this, Kitty had let out a forced laugh and brushed her hair out of her face in mock casualness. “Buy a girl a drink first,” she said.

“All right,” Maribel had said. “Let’s go.”

And that had been it.

In those first few weeks, they bonded over their shared inability to ever be president—Kitty had been born in Ireland, while Maribel lived in Spain until she was four—their Catholic backgrounds, and their mutual appreciation for “bad” nineties era pop.

Eventually, Kitty admitted a flaw in her logic. “The problem,” she told Maribel, “is that then your siblings grow into super maladjusted adults because no one was protecting _them_ , and you think, ‘Was it my fault?’ and you become the responsible one, and it’s just… I don’t know. Not great.”

“You feel responsible for your sister?” Maribel asked.

“I certainly used to. Now…” Kitty slapped her hands together, as if clearing them of crumbs. She tried to ignore the horrified look on Maribel’s face.

“And your brother?”

“He’s got his shit pretty figured out,” Kitty said. “More money than God and all that, but he’s not happy. I don’t think. I mean, what do I know really, though? Most years I only see him once or twice.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Manhattan.”

“He’s here in New York?”

“Yeah.”

“And you only see him once a year?”

“Sometimes twice.”

“Right.”

“He did his duty back in the day,” Kitty said. “I don’t want to bother him now.”

Every Sunday morning, Kitty and Maribel cooked an elaborate breakfast together. Even on mornings Kitty woke up in her own apartment, she still walked over to Maribel’s for this morning meal. It had become a ritual of sorts, a replacement for the Catholic Masses they both grew up attending. Usually they listened to music—Hanson or the Spice Girls or some other nineties fixture—dancing around the kitchen in their socks, but, the morning after Kitty’s flight from the bedroom, they were both silent. Sitting down to a breakfast of spinach-and-egg-filled crepes, Kitty began to wish she had left the apartment all together.

“Kitty,” Maribel finally said, “what was the worst of it?”

“I hardly remember it now.”

“You obviously remember enough.”

Perhaps she did. The “worst” was hard to define, though. Her mother’s anger and her father’s indifference were not so noteworthy, nothing like the stories that made the news, but they were constant, an ever-looming cloud. The atmosphere of her parents’ home reminded Kitty of winters in Dublin, the feeling of constant damp, knowing you were unlikely to ever freeze to death while resigning yourself to the knowledge that you would never be completely dry either, that there would always be some discomfort left over, wrapping its arms around you. Then there was the lurking specter of everything Kitty still couldn’t understand, like the deadbolt Brandon installed on her bedroom door before he went away to college or the orders from Sissy to lock it every night and never come out before morning, no matter what she heard. The constant crashes and shouting, always unseen. These were the worst—the shadows and the questions. But they were not what Maribel was talking about, not what had seized Kitty last night.

Kitty knew she was repeating herself but said it anyway: “I hardly remember it.”

There had been a cousin, an older one, though how old Kitty was not sure now, perhaps had never known. She was six, she knew. Sissy was ten. Brandon, fourteen. The cousin had stayed with them that summer, though once again Kitty couldn’t remember why. Maybe for work, maybe for school. They were still in Dublin back then, in a flat just a few miles from Trinity College. The cousin was nice, or had seemed that way at first. He and Brandon got along particularly well. Then, one night, Kitty had woken to the feeling of someone on top of her, someone big, someone crushing her. With one adult-sized hand, the someone had pinned both of Kitty’s arms above her head, reaching with his other hand through the bottom of her nightgown. For reasons she could not explain, Kitty had neither screamed nor otherwise resisted, had not called out for Sissy sleeping in the bed beside her. Instead she had laid completely still as the man fiddled with the elastic of her underwear. Playing dead, perhaps, hoping the man would paw at her a few times, grow bored, and wander away, like a wild animal more afraid of her than she was of it. But Kitty _was_ afraid. Very much so. “This is a dream,” she had told herself, shutting her eyes tightly, knowing that the worst part was yet to come. Then, suddenly, it stopped, and Kitty opened her eyes to see Brandon bursting through the door, yanking the man off her and finally waking Sissy, who reached out for Kitty, pulling her into her own bed with surprising force, whispering comforting words to her, telling her not to look. But Kitty did look, and, in the light now streaming from the opened door, she saw her brother and her much bigger cousin wrestling on the floor.

“He beat the shit out of him,” Kitty told Maribel, the _he_ being the cousin, the _him,_ Brandon. “My parents never came to see what the noise was. We moved to New Jersey like two months later, to get away I guess.”

Kitty, who had been staring at her lap throughout the story, jumped as Maribel’s hand appeared in her line of vision, squeezed her knee gently.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Maribel said.

“I hardly think about it anymore,” Kitty said, which was true. She hardly thought of the weight of the cousin as he lay on top of her, hardly thought of the feel of him, but she did think about what happened after. How had Brandon known to come rescue her? What had happened to make him know? How many times had it happened? How many years? “Hardly anything happened,” Kitty said. “Hardly anything to _me_.”

When Maribel broke up with Kitty six months later, Kitty decided it was finally time to call her sister. She knew what it looked like—what it was. That she could only be bothered to call Sissy when she needed something. But wasn’t that what little sisters did? It was certainly what Sissy did with Brandon, and with Kitty too for that matter. It was just that Sissy’s needs were so limitless Kitty could never fulfill them and had stopped trying, stopped picking up. Kitty knew her sister would pick up for her, though. Sissy could never ignore a phone call.

Kitty had been told to wear the “best thing” she owned and meet Sissy outside the 79th Street subway station but when she arrived Sissy wasn’t there. Kitty hadn’t expected Sissy to be on time but after fifteen minutes, she started to wonder if Sissy was going to show at all. Then her phone buzzed, a text from Sissy: _I’m at the Bernard. We have a reservation. I’m waiting for you._

This was very like Sissy, changing the plan at the last minute to throw you off your guard, to make it seem as though _you_ had kept _her_ waiting. Kitty sighed and began moving toward the restaurant, walking as quickly as her towering heels would allow.

“Kit Kat!” Sissy cried as the hostess walked Kitty over to the table. As Sissy leapt up to give her a hug, Kitty tried not to cringe, feeling the stares of the other restaurant patrons. Sissy was too loud for this place, as she was for most places. Sissy was not, however, Kitty noticed as she sat down, underdressed. Her long-sleeved shift was sheer and decorated with gold rhinestones, imbuing her with an art deco elegance. Kitty, meanwhile, had turned her closet over, searching for its “best thing,” and found only a too-short pink dress with fake velvet detailing. She had paired this with a too-long black cardigan and too-high black heels and was now feeling rather silly and exposed. Kitty had never been anywhere quite so upscale before.

“So,” Sissy said, “you’ve been dumped?”

Kitty had admitted to the breakup on the phone but not revealed any details, such as the name or gender of her now-ex. She had also not referred to herself as “dumped.”

“I guess I have,” she said.

“Well, I’m a good person to call when that happens.”

“Because you get broken up with so much?”

“Because I’m fun!” Sissy said, leaning forward with a smile that Kitty found somewhat threatening. Sitting back in her chair, she said, “I should set you up with someone.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Kitty said. The someones Sissy tended to know were usually older, moneyed men, often married to someone else.

“You’re a homo, right?” Sissy said, flashing that same threatening smile.

Kitty made a noise of disgust.

“What?” Sissy asked, the smile gone as quickly as it came, so quickly, Kitty thought, no one would have believed her had she said anything about it.

“You know, I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Kitty said.

“Oh, come on, Kit Kat. It’s not a big deal or anything, not to me.”

“If it’s not a big deal to you, don’t call me that, because that’s what people say when it is a big deal, and I don’t see why you would say that if you don’t have a problem with it, because… I mean, do you have a problem or something?”

Kitty was getting flustered, the way she always did around Sissy. Spending time with Sissy was like playing a never-ending game of who could pretend best. What they were pretending, Kitty could never quite grasp. She always lost, though. She understood that.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Sissy said.

To Kitty’s horror, Sissy was standing up from her seat and walking toward her. As Sissy kneeled beside her, resting her chin on the arm of Kitty’s chair, Kitty tried to ignore the stares of the people eating around them.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” Sissy said again.

“I just don’t see why everything has to be a joke with you.”

“Oh, baby, I’m sorry. I don’t have a problem. I think it’s great! I think everyone should be a lesbian.”

Kitty smiled, a real smile, not the pretend version. There was a reason she had called Sissy, beyond just obligation. It was precisely Sissy’s ability to make a joke out of everything that Kitty had been seeking. The jokes were constant, often inappropriate, but then in every conversation with Sissy something would happen, even out. She’d tell a joke at the right time or in the right way, something designed to make Kitty feel better instead of worse, and Kitty would feel for a moment that she and Sissy were on the same team, competing against everyone else rather than each other.

“You think everyone should be a lesbian?” Kitty repeated. “Even you?”

“Well, maybe not me.”

“It would certainly clear the playing field.”

“Yes, I’d be very popular.”

With that, Sissy finally returned to her seat but not before throwing her arms around Kitty and planting a kiss on her forehead.

“By the way,” Kitty said, rubbing away the lipstick she could feel clinging to her skin, “don’t call me baby.”

“Why not? You are the baby, aren’t you?” When Kitty made a face, Sissy said, “It’s not a bad thing. You should enjoy it. The innocence of youth.”

When the waiter arrived, Kitty realized she hadn’t even looked at the menu and opened it to find there were no prices listed.

“Get whatever you want,” Sissy said, as Kitty scanned the menu, looking for the item she thought would be cheapest.

“I’ll have the tuna,” Kitty said.

“Ah, the yellowfin,” the waiter said, making Kitty feel as if she’d been corrected.

“I’ll have the lobster,” Sissy said, “and a bottle of champagne for the table.”

“Sissy,” Kitty whispered as soon as the waiter had left, “I can’t afford this.”

“You don’t have to,” Sissy said. “You think I’d make my little sister pay for her own meal?”

Sissy asked as if the prospect were ridiculous, but Kitty often paid for her own meals when she was with Sissy. Kitty often paid for Sissy’s meals as well. For four months during Kitty’s sophomore year of college, Sissy had lived with her in the dorms—a covert arrangement—and had used so many of Kitty’s meal swipes, Kitty had run out before the end of the semester and been forced to buy more.

“This is on Mark.”

“Who’s Mark?”

“My boyfriend,” Sissy said as if Kitty should have already known. “When you called me, I told Mark that my baby sister had just had her heart broken and he put me on a plane out here and wrote me and check and said, ‘Take care of her.’”

“You flew out here?” Kitty had just assumed Sissy was living in New York.

“I’ve been in LA for over a year.”

“I didn’t know. You didn’t have to fly all the way out.”

“Oh, but I did. Besides, it’s not every day I get a call from you. It’s like seeing the pope. I figured I had to seize the opportunity.”

“Well, it’s good to see you.”

“I bet,” Sissy said with an impish smile.

Kitty’s mother started calling her fat shortly after they moved to the United States.

“You have such a womanly figure already,” she said. “You keep eating like that and you’ll get breasts before you know it. And let me tell you something, the world is not kind to a ten-year-old with tits.” Kitty was seven at the time.

“Loving someone who feels so uncomfortable in their own body is just too hard for me,” Maribel told Kitty during the breakup.

“How can I ever get comfortable if you _stop_ loving me?” Kitty had wanted to ask but hadn’t. It reminded her too much of her sister, of Sissy’s unbridled desperation where men were concerned, where anyone was concerned really.

“It’s not what happened to you,” Maribel said. “It’s the things you say about yourself.” As if those were separate.

“You’re a real catch,” Sissy told Kitty as they lounged in Sissy’s expensive, Mark-funded hotel room after their expensive, Mark-funded meal. Between the two of them, they had consumed the entirety of the champagne at dinner, Kitty drinking heavily because it seemed too expensive to waste and Sissy, Kitty assumed, drinking heavily because she wanted to—though perhaps this was unfair. By the time they arrived back at Sissy’s hotel, Kitty was somewhere between tipsy and drunk and, after Sissy ripped the tops off various bottles in the minifridge—another expense incurred and therefore not to be squandered—Kitty moved from this ambiguous middle ground to unambiguously drunk. Now, she was half-sitting-half-lying on the room’s king-sized bed, dressed in one of the hotel’s white, fluffy robes. Sissy was wearing one as well but had tied it so loosely the robe kept falling open, exposing her bare breasts. Kitty, forced to look away each time and wait for Sissy to notice, wished her sister would be more careful.

“You might not know you’re a catch,” Sissy continued, her robe mercifully closed, “and that Mira girl might not have known it, but you are.”

“Maribel,” Kitty corrected.

“Yeah,” Sissy said. “Fuck her.”

“What makes me such a catch then?” Kitty asked, trying to distract Sissy from her ire—she was not yet ready to hear Maribel spoken of in such a way—but also genuinely curious.

“For starters, you’re like, super smart.”

Kitty’s spirts fell. She knew this already.

“A lot of people are smart,” she said.

“You’re cute too.”

“No I’m not.”

“You are.”

Kitty shook her head.

“You are!” Sissy said. “Smile for me.” Kitty did, throwing her hair back for good measure. “See,” Sissy said. “Look at those dimples.”

“That’s not cute,” Kitty said. “That’s called being chubby.”

“No it’s not.”

“Then it’s called having a fat face.”

Sissy sighed dramatically and let her torso fall backwards onto the bed. “You’re exhausting, you know that? How do you ever expect to find someone when you say shit like that?”

Kitty frowned. “You ever think maybe people like us just aren’t able to have relationships?”

“People like us?”

“Our family.”

“I’m in a relationship with Mark right now.”

“Yeah,” Kitty said, wondering how long this new man would last, how far he’d be willing to be pushed before he got tired or bored and went back to his life before Sissy, to his friends or job or wife.

“Is there something you want to talk about, Kit Kat?” Sissy said, propping herself up on her elbows.

Kitty shook her head.

“You can always talk to me,” Sissy said and, seeing the genuine concern in Sissy’s face, the absence of that leering smile, Kitty knew that she meant it, that this wasn’t part of the game. Kitty also knew, despite her sister’s sincerity, that she was wrong.

When Kitty was nine, her school sent her home with a note for her parents informing them she had a BMI of twenty. She wasn’t in trouble, the note said, but, per state standards, all the school’s fourth graders had been measured and weighed, and Kitty had been found, per federal standards, to be overweight—though not yet obese—a situation of which state standards required parents be notified. She wasn’t in trouble, the note said once more in closing. The goal was merely to keep parents and guardians informed, to equip them with the tools to act before anything got too out of hand _._

Kitty was, of course, in trouble.

“You know what happens to little girls who get too fat?” her mother asked her. “They start their menstruation. That’s what happens. You want to start menstruating, Kitty?”

“No.”

“Your sister started her menstruation in fourth grade.”

Kitty knew this. Sissy’s first period had been a big deal in their household. Their mother had been livid, as if Sissy had done it on purpose just to spite her. Sissy had not been fat, just unlucky.

“You know what they say about girls who menstruate too early?”

Kitty looked down, avoiding eye contact. Her mother was always asking questions only to tell Kitty the answer seconds later. In her first few years of school, Kitty never raised her hand in class, having learned the danger that came with providing your own answers.

“They say they’re slu—”

“Kitty, grab your coat,” Brandon said, striding into the living room, his bedroom door slamming shut behind him. Until now, Kitty hadn’t even known he was home.

“She’s not leaving this house,” their mother said, but Brandon simply turned his back on her, staring at Kitty as if their mother weren’t there.

“Go on, go get it.”

“Brandon,” Kitty heard her mother say as she hurried off to the closet for her coat.

When Kitty returned, she found her mother standing in the middle of the room, her arms crossed, Brandon still ignoring her. For some reason, their mother never got as angry with Brandon as she did with Kitty and Sissy. If Brandon weren’t so quick to come to her aid, Kitty would have been jealous of him. Sometimes she still was.

“Let’s go,” Brandon said, placing a hand on Kitty’s elbow and directing her toward the door.

“Don’t take her for ice cream,” their mother yelled as they left, a final protest.

At the old-fashioned ice cream parlor a few blocks from their house, Brandon and Kitty’s go-to spot when life at home became intolerable, Brandon ordered a strawberry ice cream for Kitty and mint chocolate chip for himself.

“Maybe I shouldn’t eat this,” Kitty said, staring at the cool, pink mound in front of her, imagining the feel of the frozen chunks of strawberry thawing on her tongue.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Kitty said, hoping that Brandon would fill in the rest. “Because of what Mom said,” she added when he failed to do so.

“She doesn’t mean it,” Brandon said, a claim Kitty seriously doubted. “She’s just jealous, and it makes her say stupid things.”

“Jealous of what?”

“Of you,” Brandon said, “of how…” He paused, searching for the right word or perhaps having found it already and debating whether to use it. “Of how young you are,” he concluded.

Kitty raised her eyebrows incredulously. She couldn’t imagine what there was to be jealous of there. As far as she was concerned, the younger you were, the worse it was. Adults had it far better than kids, she thought, getting to say and do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, never having to worry about grownups being mad at them, never having to hide.

“Is she jealous of Sissy too?” she asked.

Brandon considered this for a moment before answering. “Yeah,” he said. “Definitely.”

“Why isn’t she jealous of you?” Kitty asked, thinking of all the things Brandon got away with that she never could.

Brandon smiled. “That’s because I’m old too.”

“Not as old as her.”

“Old enough,” Brandon said with a false-sounding chuckle. “Now, go on. Eat your ice cream before it melts.”

Kitty nodded, shoveling a spoonful into her mouth, replaying the way her brother said “go on” in her head. It was different from the way she said it, the _o_ s more elongated. Growing up in Ireland, Kitty had not been aware she had an accent, but, as soon as she started school in America, the other children had made it very clear to her. She had an accent, they didn’t. She sounded different, and it would be best not to. Within a year, Kitty had “lost” her accent, or rather gained a different one. Though it took longer, Sissy did the same. Brandon, on the other hand, did not. Maybe it had something to do with being “old enough.” He was fourteen when they moved, more fully formed than Kitty or Sissy, too old to change. It bothered Kitty that she and Brandon didn’t even talk the same way anymore, another difference to add to the list, on top of his being a boy, his being “old,” and the way the two combined to make their mother like—or at least tolerate—him so much better, the way they made his life so much different from hers and Sissy’s.

“Hey,” Brandon said, sensing Kitty’s continued unease, “tell me about school.” This was, under normal circumstances, one of Kitty’s favorite topics. “What did you do today?”

“We went to the nurse’s office and got weighed.” Kitty put her spoon back down.

“And measured, right? How tall are you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Come on. You must know.”

“Maybe we should go home.”

“No,” Brandon said, and at first Kitty thought he was trying to cheer her up, searching for the next thing to say. Then she realized he wasn’t even looking at her anymore but instead over her shoulder, squinting as if trying to make something out in the distance. Without warning, he stood up and walked purposefully to a table behind her. Turning around, Kitty saw Sissy sitting there with a boy—a man, really—leaning forward over the table so the boy—man—could look down her low-cut shirt, something he seemed to be doing. In addition to the shirt, Sissy was wearing hoop earrings big enough to fit around her wrists, a miniskirt, and more makeup than Kitty had ever seen her use before. Knowing something was about to happen, Kitty left the table and hurried over to stand by her brother, hoping she might be a moderating presence.

“Kit Kat,” Sissy said, looking up at her with mock excitement, acting as if Brandon weren’t there.

“What are you doing?” Brandon hissed.

“Kitty,” Sissy said, continuing to ignore Brandon, “I’d like to introduce you to my friend Bruce.”

The man extended his hand, but Kitty didn’t shake it. Strange men always made her nervous. And right now, Brandon was making her nervous as well. The best course of action, she decided, was no action at all.

“How old are you, Bruce?” Brandon asked.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” the man said.

“How old did she tell you she was?” Brandon asked. Then, before either Sissy or the man could answer, “She’s thirteen.”

The man looked up at Brandon, completely unsurprised. Without fully knowing why, Kitty thought she might be sick.

“Come on,” Brandon said, grabbing Sissy by the arm and pulling her out of her chair—hard.

“What the fuck, Brandon?” Sissy said, but Brandon hardly reacted, reaching for Kitty’s hand as he pulled them both out of the building.

“What the fuck?” Sissy said again once they were standing on the sidewalk outside.

“You want to make it true?” Brandon said, leaning menacingly over Sissy and squeezing her arm more tightly, wrapping his hand painfully around Kitty’s hand as well.

“Make what true?” Sissy asked.

“You know what.”

“You sound just like Mom.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck you!” Sissy yelled, pulling herself free from Brandon’s grasp.

“This can’t go on,” Brandon muttered, turning back toward the ice cream shop and barging through the doors, dragging Kitty along behind him like an extra appendage he had had forever and long since forgotten about. Stopping at the man’s table, he pointed his finger at him. “I see you with my sister again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“All right, kid,” the man said, and, for a second, Brandon seemed like he was going to punch him, drawing the hand attached to Kitty’s back in a windup. Then he glanced over his shoulder, registering her presence for the first time. At first, he looked horrified, contrite, then he set his face resolutely and marched back out, only letting go of Kitty’s hand when they were outside, at which point, Kitty rushed away from him into the open arms of her sister.

“You scared her,” Sissy said.

“No I didn’t.”

“You fucking did,” Sissy said.

Late that night a figure appeared in Kitty’s doorway, and, even though she no longer shared a room with Sissy, Kitty still found herself looking over at the other side of the room, half-wishing her sister were there to protect her, half-glad Sissy was somewhere else, protected from what was about to happen. As the figure moved toward her, Kitty drew the covers up over her head, erecting a barrier between herself and the stranger. Feeling the weight of the figure come to rest on the edge of her bed, Kitty sighed, resigned. “Don’t hurt me,” she said from underneath the blanket.

“What?” the figure asked. “I won’t. It’s me. I wouldn’t.”

Hearing a familiar voice, Kitty slowly unfurled herself from the blanket to find Brandon sitting at the end of the bed. It was dark, but Kitty thought his face looked strange, somewhat unsteady, as if he might cry. “I’m sorry,” he said, pulling her into a tight hug. As he drew away, Kitty saw him brush something away from the corner of his eyes.

“Did I scare you?” he asked. “Earlier today?”

“No,” Kitty said, a lie. “It’s just…” She trailed off, unsure how to continue.

“Just what?”

“It’s just…” She thought about the way her brother talked, about the way their mother talked to him. Then she thought of Sissy. “You’re just not like us anymore,” she said.

Before Brandon could react, Kitty laid down and closed her eyes. She thought she heard sniffling but tried to convince herself otherwise. Worried he might linger, she pulled the covers back over her head, a signal for him to leave. Even at nine, she knew she was doing something wrong.

A year later, on a hot, muggy day the summer before Brandon left for college, Kitty lay on her bed, trying to avoid sweating by holding herself as still as possible. When a door slammed downstairs, she hardly reacted, accustomed to the noise and unwilling to move. When the yelling started, Kitty remained motionless, trying to determine who was in the house at the time. When Sissy came running up the stairs moments later, telling Kitty to lean a chair underneath the doorknob and not come out until Sissy called her, Kitty knew that Brandon must be gone. On days when Brandon was home, she and Sissy both hid behind the door. On the rare occasions when he was not home, Kitty hid alone.

Kitty always worked hard to ignore the sounds from downstairs, often chewing on the inside of her cheeks, anything to stop herself from asking the questions building inside her. She judged the severity of what she heard by the extent of the damage, the metallic taste of blood. Kitty was just noticing that familiar iron taste, when Sissy arrived at the door, her knock loud, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“Let me in, please. Please, Kit Kat.”

Back then, Kitty was unfamiliar with the pleading tone that she would later come to associate so strongly with her sister.

Moving the chair, Kitty opened the door to find Sissy half-crumpled in the hallway, her face covered in red marks—the beginnings of bruises—her lip bleeding. Remembering this moment years later, Kitty would always be surprised by her sense of calm, by the way she wrapped a gentle arm around Sissy’s waist, guiding her into bed, tucking the covers around her before leaving to get towels and water, creating cold compresses that she held to her sister’s face. For the adult Kitty, this was the first—though not last—memory she had of seeing Sissy so injured. Where had the calm come from then? How had ten-year-old Kitty known exactly what to do? In Kitty’s puzzling over her childhood, this memory would give her two more questions to add to the list.

At the time however, Kitty wasn’t thinking of questions, only solutions, ways to take care of Sissy, to help her sister who had so clearly taken this beating as a means of protecting her. After finishing her ministrations, Kitty climbed into bed beside her sister, carefully crawling over Sissy—who was lying at the very edge of the bed, facing away from the wall—placing herself behind her sister, whispering reassurances into her ear. Things like, “You’re okay,” and “It’s okay now,” and “You’re safe.” Things neither Kitty nor Sissy truly believed.

This is what Kitty was doing when Brandon arrived home, calling after her and Sissy almost as soon as he entered the house, no doubt seeing the destruction downstairs—a destruction Kitty only ever heard—and knowing something had gone terribly wrong. While neither Kitty nor Sissy answered him, Brandon found them quickly enough, rushing to the bed and crouching down beside Sissy, pushing a stray hair out of her face.

“What happened?” he asked, looking at Kitty even though she had no answer, never had one.

“You left me alone with him,” Sissy said, her first words since her pleading to be let into the room.

“I’m so sorry, Sissy,” Brandon said.

“Why’d you do that to me?” Sissy asked, her voice rising.

Brandon looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s not good enough, Brandon.”

The words exited Sissy like spit, dripping with disdain. As Brandon lifted his head, Kitty watched him transition from compassion to anger, his body still but his face transforming entirely.

“What would be good enough?” he asked. “Huh? What would satisfy you? You want me to stay here forever?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Why’s it always have to be me, Sissy? Why do I always have to be here? Why can’t I have a life?”

His anger built, crowding out Sissy’s. “Don’t leave me alone with him again,” she said, her voice once more a whisper.

“All right,” Brandon said. He closed his eyes before continuing, the compassion returning as soon as he opened them. “I won’t.” When Sissy began to sob, Brandon took her hand in his. “I won’t, Sissy. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m not going anywhere.”

A month later, he left for school in New York City, just an hour away from the family home. He rarely returned, looking guiltier and guiltier each holiday he did make an appearance. Eventually, he stopped coming home all together. Every once in a while, Kitty would call him, usually after another round of criticism from her mother, but each time they spoke, the reassurance Brandon doled out felt less genuine. He sounded tired, not necessarily of life but of her.

Anger and neglect continued to haunt the house, their visible markings often winding up on Sissy’s face. After every fight, as Kitty tended to her, Sissy would say in a mocking, sing-song voice, “I’m not going anywhere.” Then she’d stare over Kitty’s head, searching for someone who was no longer there.


End file.
